The BRAWL² Tournament Challenge has been announced!
It starts May 12, and ends Oct 17. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
It starts May 12, and ends Oct 17. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
Depiction and Inclusion of Religion, Culture and Ethnicities in games
Hey all,
I’ve been noticing more games featuring real-world religions, ethnic communities, and cultural settings. I’m curious how Western players perceive this trend.
Games like Assassin’s Creed and God of War explore mythology or historical cultures and tend to get a lot of attention in the West. Japanese mythology games also resonate widely, beyond the anime and manga trend. On the other hand, games like Raji: An Ancient Epic and Venba, which draw on Indian cultural history and other less-represented communities, have yet to spark as much discussion among Western audiences.
So my questions are:
- How much do you gravitate toward games rooted in cultures or religions outside your own?
- Why do some culturally rich games get more discussion and engagement than others, even when the execution is strong?
- What makes cultural or religious representation feel immersive rather than forced or instructional?
- Do Western audiences engage more easily with mythologized cultures versus contemporary or culturally specific ones?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Replies
They don't relate to Indian culture because to them, Indian culture is basically just chicken curry and Bollywood, and then they think about everything else they've seen or heard about; brown people with a severe lack of hygiene and safety standards, rats crawling over food, crowds of indian men swarming a lone white female tourist, rivers on fire with a bloated dead cow floating downstream because of pollution, jam-packed trains, and a extremely oppressive caste based system of rule.
All of the above run contrary to western values and beliefs, right down to the spicy food. If it sounds like racism, it's because it partially is, but also partially isn't, and partially plain ignorance.
There's a lot of really cool stuff about India; armour and weaponry, textiles, geography, temples, religion, but from what I've seen these aren't really the first things that come to mind.
Japan resonates with the western audience because their culture has an emphasis on hygiene, work ethic, talking quietly, being mindful of personal space, being polite, and the people hold a reserved dignity. The climate is cooler, the food is generally less spicy, less weird, and the people have a lighter skin. Also after WW2 America played a role in rebuilding Japan after nuking it, so there was a lot of cultural exchange. A lot of Japanese values are similar to Christian and European renaissance values.
I googled Raji and Venba. These games look uninteresting to me; I don't see the appeal of playing as an indian woman (I like to play as a cultist that throws magical burning blood in the eyes of my enemies) or exploring familial relationships through food. I struggle to think of anything I can relate to in these games as a chinese american, and as part of the western audience. I don't see any build variety that you'd find in games like Path of Exile. Assassin's Creed was only good for the first few games & Black Flag. Everyone hates Ubisoft now. God of War is only good because of Christopher Judge.
There is a rise in the topic of 'soft power'; basically, propaganda. When a country overcomes it's outside perceptions. China, despite all it's horrors and skeletons they've shoved way back in it's closet, has taken great strides to overcome it.
Thanks for your reply. With question 2, I'm asking more about (And I don't like to compare games, because each one deserves to stand on its own merit) But comparing something like Black Myth Wukong to Raji... or Assassin's Creed Mirage to Raji. Black Myth was a brand new IP from a brand new studio same as Raji, but it garnered more attention than Raji or Venba. And I wonder if it has to do more with the fact of what genre of game it is, rather than the culture or the mythology that it's centered around. And yeah I agree with your first and third point too. About how that specific culture or mythology or religion has to appeal to the player in a way that doesn't challenge their beliefs. Or feel like a massive history lesson.
For example, I had no interest in Viking culture or Norse mythology until I played God of War 2018, and I wasn't a fan of the older style of God of War games either, nor did I care for Greek mythology or Kratos as a character in that version. But besides the graphics, I think it was PlayStation's brand recognition on the 2018 game that sold me on that game, and hence I've become a fan of Viking culture and some Norse mythology. If the game wasn't a PlayStation first-party title, then I don't know if I would be playing it. Now I'm not sure if I'm in the vast minority here or not.
Lastly like @zetheros said below, it raises an interesting question about how much a player needs to relate to a character for them to want to play said game (? With ethnicity, culture, religion, struggle through life, what's the thing that most players care about?). I could argue that the older God of War games had strong gameplay and interesting mythology to back it up with no relatable characters. And while I appreciated the new take on Kratos being a father, I was more focused again on the core gameplay and the mythology. And only in recent years have I started relating more with this new version of Kratos as a character.
I won't argue against your point here about how Indian culture can be viewed from that lens, but that could be said about other cultures too. Yet other cultures have or had major AAA titles in development, like Assassin's Creed Mirage touching on Islam Something like the cancelled Black Panther game which would have been set in Wakanda (Granted, those two might have more IP Staying power hence why people are more open to it)
But then you get into the whole discussion of culture vs. religion vs. mythology, and where you draw the line for what a player enjoys learning about and engaging with from a narrative and gameplay standpoint
I respect your stance on not being able to connect with those other two indie games I mentioned, and that's totally fair. I'm in the same boat to some degree. But that also opens up a larger conversation about how much people want to relate to the character that they're playing as vs just playing a video game for the fun of it. And I think it really just comes down to the story and the world you're building. If the game doesn't have any sort of proper story where it's just a purely multiplayer-based game, then it's a whole different conversation. But yes, I do agree that even with multiplayer games, if there were different avatars or operators, the player would probably pick a character that resembles their ethnicity or personal identity
I can't speak too much on the Chinese gaming boom in the past few years, mostly because I've only played Black Myth Wukong. But I do think that if the product is appealing to the larger market and it's doing something genuinely different that the West isn't, then the player probably isn't going to care what country the game is coming from if the entertainment value is high. Of course you'll still have people saying “this game was made in X country, and X country is the US’s enemy, so I won't play it”. We’re seeing something similar happening with Saudi-funded expansions and funding towards game and film. The new expansion for AC Mirage got good reviews but raised questions about how much control they’d have over the gaming industry if they fund everything, but I digress.
I played a couple of games recently; both were horror games. One based on Mexican culture and the other Japanese. The Mexican game had a great story, but it wasn't scary to me because it was SOOOO deep in the culture and the gods, spirits, other beings and iconography and I had no idea who they were or what they represented. There was a room with statues and stuff, and I just went through it no problem, it had a jump scare, but no real issue. Turns out those statues were like a bad omen and the god of death or something. Had I knew what that represented, my reaction would have been different.
The Japanese game was kinda scary because I knew a bit of the backstory and it was creepy. The pace of the game is total Japanese movie horror-style and that just made me roll my eyes, however my son and wife refused to watch me play because it freaked them out. The audio, story, style of story-telling and the backstory was enough to make them not come around me when playing. Within the game there was a chase sequence and some "hide from the monster" mechanics, which is a common fear for anyone in any culture, that worked. But overall I feel if I were Japanese I would have been freaked out more.
Both of these games were developed by people from that culture and I felt they were meant for people of that culture. I enjoyed the game side of it, but the story would have had more effect on me had I grew up in those respective countries. Games that want a more broader audience can't do that, or if they do, offer it in layers where people who understand the culture can pick up on the clues and other can still have fun without knowing who Mictlāntēcutli is.
I hope my post makes sense.
What really matters is if the game and the story are actually good - the rest is merely a world-building style.
I've seen some games made with heavy focus on "my" own culture... but without anything to engage with: a faceless protagonist, a generic quest line, an empty world... Can have very convincing historical assets and archaic manner of speech, but if there's no life in it it's wasted effort.
Even in the same culture, when done like this, these games would appeal only to history nerds / cultural warriors, but not conventional players.
The thing I liked the most about the demo is the way the game is not afraid to have a rather powerful character right off the bat, so this was refreshing. And the visuals especially at the very beggining were nicely done.
However the character animations looked amateurish ; but more importantly, the way the game seemingly expects the player to be in awe of its setting was annoying. It takes itself way too seriously, almost feeling like a project that got governement funding hence playing it very safe.
As far as I am concerned it didn't make me curious about its world at all since it just felt like surface-level set dressing (now to be fair the fact that I tend to skip cutscenes probably didn't help).
By contrast I am currently playing a bit of El Shaddai on PS3 and have no issue getting into its bizarre and utterly alien setting. The game is a bit clunky and far from perfect but its visual design alone draws me in and makes me want to keep playing.